


Salty

by Ripley_Whitaker



Series: The Taste of You [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 04:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15598116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripley_Whitaker/pseuds/Ripley_Whitaker
Summary: Alice would always wake up with an ache in her chest for the life she would never have.  It was only in the unguardedness of sleep that her brain allowed her to imagine what might have been.





	Salty

She couldn’t find Chic.

_Where was Chic?_

He was just here. They were both in the living room, Alice trying to catch up on some homework for her photojournalism class and her son enthralled by a rerun of Sesame Street. Sometimes she felt bad about parking him in front of the TV for a while but honestly it was the only way that she could get any work done, and the sooner she finished with her communications degree from Riverdale College the better.

She got up to get a drink of water. She was maybe gone for 30 seconds at the most. She’d done it a thousand times.

A thousand times.

_Where was Chic?_

His matchbox cars were still laying on the carpet and his favorite stuffed animal (a squirrel which he’d dubbed Waffle for reasons she still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of) was laying unceremoniously heaped under the coffee table along with a Transformers action figure.

He was only three years old, how far could he get?

“Chic, come out for mommy, okay? Where are you hiding little boy?”

She tried to keep her voice cheerful as she called for him and looked around the living room. The couch was too low to the ground for him to get under, thanks to the fact that it sagged generously from years of use. Just another thing that was on her list of things to fix whenever they managed to get out of this place.

The house that her and FP were renting wasn’t a dump. It was just the definition of a starter home. She tried her best to keep it clean (as much as she could with a toddler) and they spent a lot of their free time on the weekends doing yardwork and trying to make it look like they were doing better than barely scraping by. It was something that her mother had always impressed upon her- just because you’re poor doesn’t mean your house has show it, at least not on the inside.

Somehow, they had managed to get the money to get a two-bedroom place on the border of the Southside and the Northside. They couldn’t totally escape where they came from but it was better than nothing. It was close to Riverdale College on the Northside and was also close enough to Fred Andrew’s construction firm. Fred had hired on FP shortly before Chic was born and so far, everything seemed to be going smoothly. FP had started out as a regular worker but Fred recently promoted him to Assistant Foreman, which was a big boost to their finances. It was almost enough to envision getting into a nicer place, maybe even out of the Southside entirely. Alice had two more semesters to go on her degree and then hopefully she’d be able to go full time at the Riverdale Register. Right now, she had her hands full with classes, taking care of Chic and getting maybe 20 hours a week at the Chock’Lit Shoppe.

Their small house was also close enough to the White Wyrm where FP could also manage his duties as the head of the Serpents. Neither he nor Alice had been as active as they wanted to be since Chic had been born but once a serpent always a serpent.

Chic wasn’t in the living room, that much was for sure.

Alice tried to suppress the steadily rising sense of panic as she checked the kitchen, two bedrooms and the lone bathroom. It didn’t take long. The place was barely 800 square feet for Christ’s sake. There weren’t that many places he could go.

She checked the front and back door. Locked. Chic wasn’t even tall enough to reach the door knobs yet but she walked the perimeter of the trailer just to be sure.

Alice continued to call Chic’s name, trying to pitch her voice so that the whole damn neighborhood didn’t hear her. The last thing she needed was rumors of her being a neglectful mother flying around.

_Where was Chic?_

He wasn’t in the house and he wasn’t outside. How much could he have wandered off in 30 seconds?

She glanced at her watch. _5:01._ FP would be home soon. Normally she’d be starting dinner right around this time. _Where the fuck is my son?_ It was starting to become a mantra.

Alice could feel herself on the verge of tears. She forced herself to take a deep breath and search the trailer again. _Don’t panic, Alice. Don’t panic. He’s got to be here somewhere._ If she didn’t keep the hysteria at bay, there’d be no chance of fixing this before her husband got home, and then things would really go to shit. _What kind of mother am I,_ she thought.   _I lost track of my own child._

_If I can’t find him in 10 minutes, I’ll call FP and try to catch him at work. He’ll know what to do. No, 15 minutes. Ok, never mind, 10 minutes. 10 minutes and I’ll call._

_5:03._

She began to search haphazardly, looking in places that even she knew there was no chance Chic could be, like under the couch cushions and behind the refrigerator. She just had to keep moving because if she stopped she was going to completely lose it.

_5:07._

“Chic, this isn’t funny, baby, please come out. Mommy’s got cookies and ice cream if you’ll just please come out.” She’d give him sweets until he was sick if he’d just stop playing this game. He could have a fucking sundae every day for dinner for the next week if she could just find him.

Her son could sometimes be mischievous, a trait that she put squarely on the back of his father, but he had never done something like this. He was more of the type of child that when you tell him not to do something he not only does it, he does it in front of you to gauge your reaction and then charms his way out of punishment with a cheeky grin. Hiding just wasn’t his style.

_5:11._

It was time to call FP. Chic had been gone for over 20 minutes at this point.

She felt like she was looking down on herself from above as she crossed the room to the kitchen phone. Alice knew that she was close to passing out. She willed herself to come back to reality and dial the office number for Andrews Construction. Luckily, she had taped it up next to the phone for emergencies. She hoped that the secretary, a waifish girl named Janey who had a son around Chic’s age and who she often traded parenting tips with, was still in.

The phone rang and rang and she imagined it on the other end, trilling sharply into an empty room. _Damn it._ She had to resist the urge to rip the phone off the wall. 

Alice made a noise of frustration and slammed the handset back into the cradle. She was dialing the number for the behind-the-bar phone at the Wyrm, the one usually reserved for irate wives and girlfriends trying to track down their spouses, when she heard gravel crunch in the driveway. Truck tires.

_FP was home._

She met FP at the door and he had a split second to register the look of utter desperation on her face before she was in his arms and she was saying something about Chic but he could barely understand her through the tears clogging her voice- _Chic was what?_

“Baby, what are you talking about? Where is Chic?”

Alice just shook her head in agony and FP grabbed her by the shoulders. She was on the verge of collapsing and her semblance of composure was completely gone.

“Where is Chic?” FP repeated sternly, shaking Alice slightly. “Tell me where he is!” He was trying not to yell but he was also fighting the panic that was rising in his throat. His little boy was missing and Alice didn’t seem to have a damn clue as to where he went.

“I don’t know,” Alice wailed. “I can’t…I can’t find him, I don’t know where he is…”

Fresh tears were coursing down her face. “I…I…looked everywhere…I’m sorry…”

FP’s grip on her shoulders grew tighter.

He didn’t look concerned anymore.

A coldly calculating look had crossed over his face. She’d seen it before, on her father right before he went up one side of her mother’s face and down the other with an open hand, after she didn’t have his supper on the table when he came home. Or when 10-year-old Alice got caught fighting on the playground at school and the school sent her home early. She’d shown up the next day with both eyes blacked and no one, including her teachers, had said a damn word. She would have knocked out any other kid that tried to comment on it but half of them dealt with the same shit in their own houses at the end of the day. Alice Smith was Southside trash and if her old man smacked her around a little bit it was just par for the course. She probably deserved it.

He looked like a shark who’d smelled blood in the water.

“You gave away our son, didn’t you Alice?” FP said flatly.

Alice gave him a confused look. “What are you talking about, FP? I would never…”

“You did what you wanted to do when you found out you were pregnant. You never wanted Chic. You gave him away and now he's dead.”

His grip on her shoulders had grown painful and she could almost hear her bones shifting.

“I swear, FP, please, let me go. You’re hurting me!” Alice pleaded, trying to shift out of his grasp. His grip was like iron after years of construction work.  

“You got rid of my son and now I’m going to have to punish you. You whores never learn.”

She winced at the epithet. It was another reminder of the past. Whenever her father had had a few, her and her mother always turned into _whores, sluts, bitches_. Sometimes she wanted to ask him what it said about him if he was the one who had married and fathered said whores, sluts and bitches, but she bit her tongue. It would only serve to enrage him further and she knew from experience to just keep her head down and be quiet.  

Before she could react, FP’s hands were around her neck and she couldn’t breathe. He was squeezing, squeezing and she couldn’t get any air, not one bit. Alice batted fruitlessly at his face and hands. It was like he was looking right through her.

“I’m sorry I have to do this, Alice, but you should’ve thought about that beforehand.”

He was completely emotionless as the life began to leave Alice’s body. Her vision was going black and she knew she didn’t have much time left. One of her nails caught him in the cheek, leaving a bleeding gouge, and it was like he didn’t feel it at all.

She tried to beg for mercy but he was completely crushing her windpipe and she could only make gagging noises as she desperately tried to get some leverage under his fingers. It didn’t do any good.

FP lowered her to the floor, with his hands still around her throat, and knelt over her during the last seconds of her life.

“Goodbye, Alice.”

* * *

 

 A 45-year-old Alice Smith woke up in her bed on Riverdale’s Northside, gasping for air and bathed in sweat.

It had all been a dream.

She immediately burst into loud braying sobs, startling awake the man laying beside her.

“Honey, honey, calm down,” FP Jones said as he tried to comfort his crying girlfriend. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare…” Alice managed to get out. “We kept Chic…and I just got up for a second…and I lost him!” This triggered a fresh wave of tears. “I lost our son again…and you were so mad…you…you…” She couldn’t get the rest out. It was too horrible.

“It’s okay, baby, it was just a dream.” FP wrapped his arms around Alice and began to rub her back consolingly.

“It was so real, FP.”

He pulled her closer to him and covered her face with gentle kisses, tasting the salt of her tears. He knew that she still lived with the guilt of giving their son away every day, but she usually wasn’t prone to night terrors, at least while they had regularly shared the same bed.

Finally, her sobs quieted down into small hiccups. He felt terrible that she still suffered so much from a decision that she made a teenager. She thought she was doing what was best for Chic, and even though sometimes he still wished that she had told him about their son, he couldn’t blame her for trying to give him a better life.

“I’m sorry, FP.” Alice said after she had calmed down a bit. Just inhaling his scent and feeling his warmth did a lot to make her feel better. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s fine, honey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just haven’t dreamt about him in a long time. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it.” Alice still looked a little peaky but she seemed miles better than when she first woke up.

“I miss our son, FP,” Alice said wistfully.

“I know you do, Alice. I miss him, too.”

In the early days of her marriage to Hal, especially before she had Polly and Betty, Alice had dreamt about Chic almost weekly, it seemed like. It was usually innocuous- flashes of rocking him to sleep or watching him play at the park. Sticky hands and the smell of baby shampoo. There was always a man beside her- not her husband, she’d realized guiltily after the first one- but the one person she really wanted. FP.

Alice would always wake up with an ache in her chest for the life she would never have.

She never told Hal about these dreams. It would raise too many questions and he’d probably grow angry with her and sulk around the house for the next three days. It just wasn’t worth it.  Alice knew that in his heart Hal knew that Chic wasn’t his child, but there was no way she could ever bring up the subject of her first born without starting a huge fight. So, she mentally packed it all away and did her best to forget it ever happened.

It was only in the unguardedness of sleep that her brain allowed her to imagine what might have been.

“Think you’re going to be able to go back to sleep?” FP asked.

“I’m going to try. I really need to get some rest, and you do too. We’ve both got work in the morning.”

Alice pecked him on the lips and spooned into his arms. “I love you, babe.”

“I love you too, Ali.”

They laid there for a while and eventually FP’s breathing evened out and she knew he’d fallen back asleep.

Sleep was a long time coming for Alice Smith that night.

She laid awake until the predawn hours, thinking about the dream and the life she could’ve- should’ve- lived. She couldn’t totally regret the path she had taken, because it had given her Betty and Polly and her grandchildren, but sometimes she wished more than anything that she could go back in time and try harder to make it work. To make Chic and FP work.

Surely, it would have been difficult but would have it had been as impossible as it seemed when she was 17? She didn’t know.

There was no use in trying to change the past.

All she had was the future, and she hoped with her children and FP beside her that she’d be strong enough to face it.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to wait to post this one but I'm really excited for you all to read it! Reviews welcome as always.


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